The world's largest exhibition to be held outside the Vatican of liturgical artifacts used by popes was launched Feb. 4 at the National Palace Museum in Taipei City, Taiwan. [...] It underscores 73 years of diplomatic relations between Taiwan and the Vatican, and highlights the deepening of bilateral relations and exchanges between the two sides.

In the two years since Germany’s president, foreign minister, and defence minister signalled that their country would take on a larger role in international affairs, the country’s leaders have received a crash course in geopolitical realism.

The partnership opens doors to broaden the two sides’ people-to people relationship. [...] Having a sense of appreciation and understanding of each other’s culture and values can potentially broaden and deepen mutual understanding between states and peoples. In 2014, amidst tensions in the South China Sea, Vietnamese and Filipino naval personnel played football, volleyball, and tug-of-war. Both sides displayed the importance of camaraderie through sports diplomacy.

 The Foreign Ministry has become just one more office that engages in public diplomacy. This must be frustrating for the idealistic and motivated Foreign Ministry diplomats based in Israel and abroad who chose the diplomatic calling out a desire to serve and defend the state against the propaganda spewed by a host of countries, non-state actors, terrorist groups, Islamists, and BDS activists. These are people who received training in the art of diplomacy and are therefore the best qualified to take up Israel’s case abroad.

...[D]emocratic governments need to apply some of the street-level lessons activists have learned to the arena of geo-strategy and public diplomacy. Don’t be intimidated and stand up for your cause — but also don’t let yourself be dragged into endlessly trying to debunk the dictator’s fantasies. Instead, focus on developing an alternative vision that would enable a country like Serbia or Russia to flourish by treating its civil society as a legitimate partner, developing positive relationships with its neighbors, and joining the international community. 

The Obama Administration has announced a new communications effort to counteract the “messaging” of ISIS. The new “Center for Global Engagement,” to be located at the State Department, will be charged with “counter-messaging” ISIS (ISIL) communications. The task of the center can be simply stated: to persuade those who might follow ISIS or other terrorist groups that following them is a very wrong idea. 

President Obama is delivering remarks at a mosque in Baltimore on Wednesday afternoon, in the first visit to an American mosque he's made during his presidency. His visit, which will also include a roundtable with Muslim community members, is intended to "reaffirm the importance of religious freedom" to life in America, the White House says.